The last chance
by Chloerules4eva
Summary: Dying in the street, Danielle is faced with one last chance to tell Ronnie that she's her long lost daughter, but with time running out, and Archie manipulating Danielle's decision, will Ronnie finally know the truth?


**Hello,**

**as you may have realised now, I watch Eastenders religiously :P**

**This storyline with Danielle and Ronnie has been driving me absolutely BONKERS.**

**But at least it all kicks off at the wedding on Thursday, or so I hear anyway.**

**Cannot wait!**

**But in the meantime, a one shot I wrote.**

**Basically, Danielle has been stabbed in the square, and she has the final chance to tell Ronnie the truth.**

* * *

I could feel the piercing pain in my side with agony, but to my relief the cold was setting in fast.

The noise of people speaking in frightened tones around me slowly began to blur at the edges...

Was this dying? Not sure I minded it so much. I'd be with Mum soon.

But... Mum was right there, holding me in her arms.

Was I in heaven already?

Taking my eyes away from my bloodstained clothes, I looked up to see her, an angel. My mum.

With a different face to the one I'd grown up with, but it was her, I was sure of it.

I reached out to touch her, to make sure she was real and not some delusion from my dying conscience.

"It's going to be alright Danielle, just hang on in there; the ambulance will be here soon..."

No, not an angel, not Mum, Mum was soft and gentle, not this cold woman here, not Ronnie.

And yet she was, at least, once upon a time.

When will this fairy tale have its happy ending?

As I felt the blood seep through my clothes, hot and sticky with the sickly rusty smell, I knew without a doubt this tale would not have a happy ending.

Oh Mum...

She'd never know, now that I was dying. I'd die and she would never know.

"Ronnie I..." I couldn't find the right words.

The end of everything, and I still couldn't find the words I'd struggled to find since meeting her for the first time.

Like searching for a light in a strange room that was getting darker and darker with each passing breath.

Sleepy, so sleepy... Just the longing to let go consumed me, the longing to let go of wishing, and love, and hate, and jealousy, and every other stupid human emotion.

Just wanting to let go of the world and let it spin on without me.

Join the angels in heaven, or the ones in hell, didn't matter to me.

Perhaps I was dead already, and these past seven months of agony had been my own personal hell.

A punishment for what crime I couldn't tell, or recall.

I winced with the pain, deciding I just had to let go-

But no, not like this! Still one thing left to do...

"Ronnie I..."

"Shhh, save your strength!" Ronnie insisted, as the crowd gathered even more. In amongst the chaos I could just see Stacey, and Peggy and Granddad.

Stacey and Peggy looked lost for words.

Granddad looked.... hopeful? A little, yes, but there was some sort of other emotion locked on his face, like passing judgement; as if deciding whether to be grateful or sad for my passing.

Perhaps even a little guilt, which intensified when I met his eyes, quietly pleading with him to say these words for me.

My dying might make his life easier, after a;; the grief I'd given him with ultimatums... but I doubted it would make him any happier than if I'd just left of my own accord.

He shook his head a little; he wouldn't speak a word for me.

Perhaps I should have left, while I still could.

But this moment in Mum's arms was worth all the heartache.

Even worth having a Granddad who wasn't prepared to save me the burden.

For whatever reason Granddad had, he still didn't want Ronnie to know about me, even on my deathbed, whether he was telling the truth about her mental illness or not.

I nodded at him to show I understood, a little at least, before returning my gaze to my Mother's lovely face.

Maybe there was no reason to tell her now that I was dying.

Perhaps my secret would be better for everyone if it went to the grave.

No one would be any the wiser.

I doubted even Stacey could muster enough spite to reveal to Ronnie that her only daughter had died unrecognised in her very arms.

All of this would be quickly forgotten if I held my tongue, I was certain.

Ronnie wouldn't stop her life to grieve very long over Danielle Jones's death.

But she might do if she knew it was her little Amy Mitchell who died.

"Ronnie, sweetheart, the ambulance are on their way, I think you should give her to Charlie and Stacey..." Granddad began.

"She belongs with her!" I heard Stacey snap at him quietly, good to know that despite everything our friendship had been through, she still cared enough to ensure my Mother stayed with me in my final hour.

"No." I whimpered, clinging to Ronnie. "Don't leave me."

Whether I told her or not, I still needed her.

She'd been there for me at the very beginning; it seemed only fair that after everything she'd missed she be there for me now, at the end of what she'd given life to.

Those precious nine months where we had been mother and daughter, inseparable for a time, combined with these last seven months.

A year and four months were all that we had had together out of the nineteen years that should have been ours.

"No, I'll stay with her." Ronnie insisted, not looking at him but at me. "No point anyway, the ambulance will be here soon. Just hang on Danielle, hang on."

I could see what she was thinking. She didn't believe I had long enough for the ambulance to arrive, let alone shift me into another's arms.

"I'm sorry Stacey." I said, meaning every single word. "Please don't hate me."

Stacey's eyes welled up, and she came forward to kneel before me.

"I don't hate you! I never have. You're the best friend I've ever had Danielle." She said her voice heavy with falling tears. Then she hesitated. "Danielle, just tell her, please."

I thought her words through, as I glanced back at Granddad, an angry look on his face as he calculated the meaning of Stacey's words.

Somehow I just couldn't justify Granddad's reasons for wishing me to keep my silence.

By trying to tear me from my Mothers arms on my deathbed, he only proved to me how little he really cared.

For once, I was going to be selfish.

It seemed only right to have one last selfish act before I died.

Finally, I knew the words, or at least some way to try.

"My name's not Danielle." I said groggily, ignoring the crowd's gasps, and Stacey's approving yet tearful expression as she nodded gently.

The pain was not as bad now; it was cool like the breeze on a summer's day, bringing back memories...

Memories that should have been Ronnie's as well as mine.

The words that had so long wished to be free were so close to breaking through those prison bars...

Ronnie just stared.

"What do you mean your name isn't Danielle?" Then she just shook her head. "It doesn't matter, just hold on and explain later. Hold on, for me."

"My... my name's Amy." I finally said, tears streaking down my face, watching recognition flash behind Ronnie's eyes. "Amy... Mitchell."

Ronnie looked shocked, her arms around me faltered for just a second.

For one moment, it was just her and me, sealed in our own little bubble away from the unwanted audience.

"But... my baby..." Ronnie began, realisation beginning to dawn on her face.

So beautiful.

I reached out and touched her cheek; tears were streaming down her face now as well.

"Goodbye Mum."

The first time I'd called her that to her face, but it would also be the last time.

I gently closed my eyes, at long last free to be lost in the darkness beckoning to me with open arms.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Ronnie's shock was over as soon as it had begun, in light of the sudden change in situation.

"My little girl..."

Before, she'd held in her arms a poor and sweet lost teenage girl, a stranger who had for a brief time been a friend.

Now she held in her arms the daughter she had longed for since their separation, as she struggled to understand how such a dramatic scene had been changed and altered in just a few short moments.

Her daughter had found her only to be lost again just as quickly.

"No!" Ronnie shrieked. "No! No, no!" She shook the body her arms, refusing to let the word 'corpse' spring to mind, for that was what Danielle was quickly becoming.

Ronnie's hopes strapped themselves to Danielle's shaky breaths in desperation.

She clung to her fast, only too aware that Danielle... her daughter... was loosing too much blood.

Horrified, Ronnie thought over the last few months.

The horrible way she'd treated her, the way Danielle had always watched her with curiosity, and then with the abortion...

The abortion.

She'd made her own daughter abort her grandchild. She'd done to Amy what Archie had done to her.

"Not my Amy, not my little Amy..." Ronnie begged.

"It's alright Mum." Danielle said gently, her eyes still closed, meaning every word. "We're together now."

The pair barely noticed the crowd conferring among themselves, the Mitchell Family staring with a mixture of shock and horror.

Danielle Jones; always in the background. She'd been a vigilant, good worker, and all that time she'd been family...

Roxy looked at her baby. The baby sitting finally made sense, because Amy was her cousin.

Peggy glanced at Archie, but was surprised with the look in his eyes.

It looked like his whole world was crumbling, but not because Danielle was dying, because his lie had been exposed.

He'd said she died as a baby.

Ronnie didn't even look back at Archie; her thoughts didn't even flicker once to him, though her mind recognised the sound of the approaching ambulance.

"Don't you dare leave me again!" Ronnie yelled. "The Ambulance is here, you're going to be ok!"

Danielle opened her eyes briefly, and touched her face again.

"You're so beautiful." She said, her eyes glittering. "I wish I was like you."

"You are!" Ronnie insisted weakly. "And we're going to have all the time in the world."

Ronnie put a hand to Danielle's face.

"You call me beautiful, but you are so much more." Ronnie promised her. "Please don't leave me." She paused, overcome with emotion. "PLEASE!"

"I'm sorry." Danielle whimpered. "And I forgive you."

Ronnie didn't need to ask what for.

"Bye Mummy."

This time her eyes didn't close.

Her head fell back, limp in Ronnie's arms, her eyes open and staring up into the starry filled sky.

Ronnie felt her weight shift as her spirit departed, and in that moment knew she'd lost her.

"My baby." She sobbed, angrily, holding Danielle close.

The ambulance pulled up, and warm arms pulled her away.

She could hear the sound of a defibrillator, but didn't register it. It was too late, Danielle was gone.

"Ronnie."

She didn't reply as Roxy's warm arms pulled her up and away, as if she were an angel carrying her to heaven.

But it wasn't her that had gone to heaven, even though she wished with all her heart it were.

Ronnie pulled out of her arms, her mind racing.

Turning, she caught Archie's eye, and all that pain and shock turned instantly into confusion.

"You told me she was dead." She said; her voice childlike.

Roxy and Peggy looked and stared at Archie, as if all of a sudden he'd been replaced with some sort of monstrosity.

"Because of you, my baby girl is dead." Ronnie said again, her voice loosing its independence and retracting back into childhood.

Archie shivered, recognising his fourteen year old daughter's voice.

There was a rush of sound behind her, as something was piled into the ambulance quickly.

"Ronnie! She's alright!" Stacey shrieked, making the whole Mitchell family snap around.

Ronnie didn't dare to hope.

She just ran into the ambulance and grabbed the girl's hand.

"Live." She begged. "Live!"

* * *

**I don't intend to continue this story, as I left it as it is for the whole purpose of letting you, the unfortunate reader, decide for yourself what happens next.**

**While I'm sure most people would have her live, I can't make up my mind. As much as I want her to live and get to be Ronnie's daughter, something tells me it's just too unlikely in this situation.**


End file.
